


The World, My Heart, The Air That I Breathe

by Razzaroo



Series: flying (like a bird to you now) [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 09:06:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16594970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: "Once, there was a prince, though in some tales he’s a priest, whose most prized companion was a hawk." Sebastian Vael falls head over heels





	The World, My Heart, The Air That I Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> I am a weak, weak woman
> 
> The title comes from the Heather Dale song "Hunter" which also lent a title to my Warden fic with a similar flavour
> 
> I know I've bent canon but, at this point, I don't care. This is wish fulfilment and it makes me happy. Self care.

Garrett is not himself.

No. Garrett, Sebastian thinks, is very much himself only his self has changed and so he seems wrong to people who don’t realise it. Sebastian recognises it, having seen the same in himself, felt himself blend old habits with his most recent self and known the stranger he must have seemed to everyone else.

It’s one of the little discussed side effects of losing a mother ( _and a father and siblings and being the last of your line.)_

Garrett’s taken to haunting his own library and his own garden instead of the Hanged Man, claiming that while a mage’s staff is perfectly acceptable for the bottom of Lowtown’s barrel, the cane that he’s been using is not. Pale before, he’s paler now and duller, as if some spark had drained out of him and slid down the Arishok’s sword that day. Despite the months that have passed, pain still hobbles his steps.

Sebastian finds him in the Amell estate’s courtyard, a small space paved with white stone and stuffed full of lavender; Leandra’s favourite, according to Bodahn. Towards the far wall, there’s rows of troughs, forming a facsimile of a vegetable garden and four fat pots stuffed with herbs huddled around the door. Garrett himself sits on a stone bench in his sea of lavender, watching the sky.

“Back again?” he says when Sebastian approaches, “Glad to know I can compete with the Maker.”

“Maybe it’s the Maker who keeps sending me,” Sebastian says, because that’s easier than telling Garrett that there’s a hook somewhere behind his sternum that tugs him back time and again.

“Then I need to start thanking Him more.”

Garrett moves so that Sebastian can sit beside him but his movements are slow, accommodating for the still healing wound in his stomach.

“Most people are calling you Champion already,” Sebastian says, “Even Elthina. That says a lot.”

“I’ll be honest, I don’t feel much like one. I feel more like…a lame horse.” Garrett’s mouth twists in a parody of his normal smile, “Or a hawk, shot out of the sky.”

“Starkhaven has a story about a hawk shot out of the sky.” Sebastian twists a head of lavender, breaks it from the rest of the bush, “It has a happy ending.”

“Tell it?”

“Once, there was a prince, though in some tales he’s a priest, whose most prized companion was a hawk. Where he went, the hawk went too and the bird became known all around for how well it hunted. On one hunt, it was shot down; some say magic, some say an arrow. And the prince was told to leave it behind, abandon it, find a new bird.”

Garrett huffs, “Starkhaven children’s stories really know how to put a damper on bedtime.”

 “Well, he didn’t leave the hawk behind. They stayed together as the hawk healed, even though it had to be carried most of the time. When it could fly again, it was months more before it even came close to what it had been but it didn’t matter; what mattered was that it recovered.” Sebastian rubs the back of his neck, a self-conscious tic, “I think my father used to tell it to try and teach lessons of patience and kindness but I never listened.”

“Important lessons for a prince. And priests, I suppose,” Garrett says. His fingers dig into the fabric of his shirt and he watches the tiny shape of a bird wheel overhead, “You’ll have to teach me some time.”

 

* * *

 

Elthina notices. She notices the time Sebastian spends at Garrett’s side, in his home, and she asks questions, all raised eyebrows and level voices. She restrains her judgement and Sebastian is grateful, just as he’s grateful for her concern.

“He’s a friend,” he says, “and he asks for me.”

“So often that you’re a rare sight. His other companions must feel left out.” Elthina’s tone suggests humour but there’s a coldness in her eyes. Sebastian never knows what she wants him to think.

There’s answers for her at the back of his throat but they cling and stick: the others have their own lives; Hawke needs him, seeking comfort for their shared griefs; it’s innocent, Elthina, it truly is. The last one chokes him, wounded that she would doubt him, even more that she would cast doubt on Hawke.

If he were any kind of decent prince, he thinks, he would speak up and defend Garrett’s honour and his own. Instead, he turns his cheek to her and lets her think that she’s won because it’s easier not to argue, because he’s tired, because he spends enough of his time fighting, because Garrett asks for him and it feels warm to be _wanted_ instead of only tolerated.

Still, he slinks into the Hanged Man in Fenris’s shadow and hides himself under Fenris’s wing, lets himself be talked into a game of cards with Merrill because she wants him to teach her how to beat Isabela when she comes back. They’re halfway through their second round when the door swings open and the place erupts with a cheer of “ _Hawke!”_

For the first time in months, Garrett stands straight and only winces when he twists, turning when Corff greets him. Sebastian feels something lift in his chest, something warm, buoyed by one ludicrously selfish thought: _You came back to me._

“Did you miss me, Fenris?” Garrett says, gentle weight of his hands on the elf’s shoulders, “Am I still your favourite mage?”

Fenris’s hands close around Garrett’s wrists, careful, cautious things, “Who could take your place?”

“Anders.”

Fenris scrunches his nose and Merrill snorts, letting her cards drop and showing Sebastian her winning hand. This, Sebastian concludes, is why she keeps losing to Isabela.

“Where is Anders?” she asks, “Have you left him behind?”

“Under strict orders to get some sleep,” Garrett replies, “Not that he ever listens.”

“You’ll find him at your desk,” Merrill says, and she rubs one hand up her cheek, “With ink smeared all up here.”

Garrett settles himself next to Sebastian; he doesn’t speak, he only waits, falling back into old routines being part of his way of finding the man he used to be. The Hanged Man obliges him, but even old routines seem practiced and wary. Sebastian listens as the conversation turns from Anders to magic, things not taught in Circles, and his eyes meet Fenris’s, both of them outsiders to this world, let in because of Garrett’s trust. Sebastian sighs and lets Garrett draw him close and tucks this evening away in his memory, among all the other things that make Elthina click her tongue and look at him with disapproving eyes.

 

* * *

 

“You’re sure I can’t stay here?”

“You’re being given a title, Hawke,” Sebastian says, absently thumbing through the pages of one of Varric’s books, “That means ceremonies.”

“That’s easy to say when you were _born_ with titles; you never had to do it.”

“Of course I did. I had my first public event when I was three months old.”

Garrett groans, “Even a prince can’t keep me.”

 _‘Hawks aren’t meant to be kept,’_ Sebastian thinks and then, ‘ _And you deserve a more honourable man.’_ Anders, at least, is a man who keeps his promises, bright and unfailing. Sebastian’s isn’t too proud to admit that, here, he is the lesser man, shown different directions and unable to pick one.

“You’re sure you can’t come?” Garrett asks, and his fingers are warm against Sebastian’s skin, magic prickling under the surface, “Prove the Maker’s on my side.”

“I’ll defer to Elthina here. Starkhaven is sending a representative and I’d like to reduce the risk of losing my head.”

“Do you ever want to leave it behind?” Garrett asks, and he traces patterns on the surface of the table, magic leaving a trail of scorched whorls, “The Chantry and Starkhaven and everything else. Run off and be your own man.” His mouth twists, “Like Isabela does.”

“Isabela only has a duty to herself.”

“Duty.” Garrett pulls a face, “Things that you can’t touch shouldn’t be chains.”

He steals a kiss before he leaves, a quiet thing, hands gentle on Sebastian’s waist. Sebastian pulls back in behind his own boundaries and breaks it off. Elthina would call this acting like a temptation.

“I’ll try and come to you,” he says, and Garrett brightens, “When Starkhaven’s representatives have gone.”

He watches Garrett leave and feels a fool for shrinking away from his own heart. He wants to take Garrett’s hand, to be as bold as Anders and show the world where he wants to be, declare before the whole of the Free Marches which hands hold half his soul.

 

* * *

 

It’s Fenris who gives him his ultimate diagnosis: lovesick and heartsore, letting himself fray over wanting someone who’d gladly have him.

“You think I’m foolish,” Sebastian says, and Fenris pours him more wine than water.

“Yes,” Fenris says and he hesitates, “But not for the reasons you think I do.”

“Don’t spare my feelings, Fenris.”

“I’m not. I’m waiting for you to change my mind.” Fenris digs one nail into the scratched table top and turns his wine in his cup, “You let what other people think control the decisions you make.”

Fenris, Sebastian knows, is someone else whose only duty is to himself, to recovering himself and choosing who he wants to be; the idea of even mentioning duty and promises, obligations to crown and country, to Chantry and chapel, to Hawke’s fair-haired cousin in Ostwick, already sounds like an excuse.

“What do you think?” he says after he drains his cup, wine bitter at the back of his throat, “You see things I don’t; what do you think I should do?”

Fenris hesitates and his ears twitch, “I think you should do what makes you happy.”

“You sound like Hawke.”

Fenris’s mouth jumps in a smile, “I can think of worse men to mirror.”

 

* * *

 

Merrill stops him on her way to Hawke’s estate. She considers him and then takes a step back and considers him even more, takes in his travelling clothes and his bow wrapped in oilskin. Her smile is puzzled.

“Are you leaving, Sebastian?” she asks, “I’d miss you, if you went. No one can fix my front door lock like you can.”

Sebastian looks at the slab she cradles like a child, wrapped in deerskin leather, “Are you going to see Hawke?”

“It’s a book for him, with magic in it he’s been asking about. It’s not illegal magic.” Her eyes bunch in a smile, “But you wouldn’t tell. Not on _Hawke.”_

She draws the name out like something to be savoured. Sebastian doesn’t say that, being an apostate, all of Garrett’s magic is illegal.

“I wouldn’t tell about you either,” he says, “Or Anders, at that.”

“I thought you could keep a secret.” Merrill cocks her head, “Where are you going?”

“To see a friend. I’ll be back.” Sebastian looks back at the Chantry, “If Elthina asks, I’m not with Hawke. I don’t want him being blamed for whatever decisions I make.”

Merrill’s expression slips a little and she pats his shoulder, her fingers only bird bones against him, before she turns and sinks into the Hightown crowd, following her thread to Hawke’s door. Sebastian wants to follow it with her, to fold himself into Garrett’s arms and against his chest and tell him everything that he plans to say and think and do.

But he doesn’t. He leaves Kirkwall, takes the first ship to Ostwick; there’s someone he needs to speak to.

 

* * *

 

Cigfa Amell is a reasonable woman. She already sits like a queen, golden hair woven into a braid and twisted into a crown, straight backed and noble hearted, holding up the dreams of the Amell line that her two stolen brothers can’t carry. Sebastian notices that the embroidery on her gown is patterned like feathers, across her shoulders and chest, copper on white; an expensive gift.

“What’s wrong, Sebastian?” she asks, and Kirkwall still sticks to her tongue, distorting the Ostwick accent she picked up somewhere along the way, “You have that look about you.”

“I…it’s not a problem,” Sebastian says. Outside, a red kite circles the meadows, close enough that its wings brush the window, “It’s about Garrett.”

Cigfa smiles, a bend of sunlight in her face, and Sebastian’s seen that exact expression in Garrett’s face before, usually when he’s planning trouble.

“Sebastian,” she says, and her pearl engagement ring gleams like a beacon, “You remember that our _arrangement_ hinges completely on you retaking Starkhaven.” She leans back in her seat and the sun gleams on her pearl engagement ring, “Besides, I’m not expecting a virgin groom in the first place.”

Sebastian feels his face colour but he can’t deny that his past has ruined any expectations anyone would have of him. He stands and takes her hand to kiss, brush of skin on skin, chaste and grateful. As he leaves, the kite calls and calls again but when he turns, there’s no bird in the sky.

 

* * *

 

 _‘Where,’_ Sebastian thinks, a silent appeal to the Maker, stranded on the Chantry steps, ‘ _do I go from here?’_

Elthina’s well in her rights, he knows, to turn him out after he tells her he no longer intends to come back to the fold of the priesthood. Starkhaven is still closed to him and he takes himself to wander the docks, his bow strapped to his back, his grandmother’s locket heavy against his chest. Sea birds wheel overhead and he half wishes he was one, able to make a nest anywhere and call it home, to leave the earth behind him; somewhere he can’t see, they shriek with indignation.

“Sebastian?”

“Hello Hawke.” Garrett comes up alongside him and Sebastian sees he has feathers caught in his hair, dark grey, and Sebastian supposes it must have been Garrett who’d disturbed the birds, despite his gut saying these are not from any seagoing bird. He reaches to pluck them free, “What have you been doing?”

Garrett stares at him, surprise written across his face, and Sebastian knows that’s closer to the reaction _he_ should be having, with his life turned out into the streets of Kirkwall, instead of walking by the docks like the world hasn’t touched him.

“Where have you been?”

“Around.” Sebastian finally meets Garrett’s gaze, “Walk with me?”

He lets Garrett twine one arm around his and the pair of them wander together, the sky dawning grey over the docks. As they walk, he tells Garrett where he’s been, what he’s been doing. Garrett makes a discontented sound at the back of his throat.

“Stay with me?” he says when they stop, sitting with their feet hanging over the endlessly shifting grey water, “As long as you like.”

Sebastian swallows, past the tightness in his chest, “What about Anders?”

“He’ll barely notice you. He hardly notices me, some days.” Garrett pulls Sebastian close and presses his cheek against Sebastian’s hair, “You can stay with me.”

Sebastian breathes and his lungs fill with the smell of the sea and of Garrett, of magic and iron and secret wild places that only mages can find. Garrett’s pulse beats beneath it all, steady and neverending, and Sebastian wants to entangle it with his, join them together in the hidden places beneath the earth.

“Only if you want to,” Garrett adds when Sebastian doesn’t answer, “I’m sure Isabela—”

“I want you,” Sebastian says, interrupting. He presses his forehead against Garrett’s, the gesture more tender than any kiss, “Only you.”

 

* * *

 

A home life is easy to fall into, when there’s already a template to follow. Sebastian falls into Hawke’s nest as if there’s already a place for him, at Garrett’s left hand as Anders is at his right. For the first week, Anders watches him, always watches, and Sebastian only shrugs him off; he’s used to being watched by people who doubt his heart. The door to the estate opens freely, letting Garrett’s circle pass in and out as they wish, their home as much as anywhere else, safe haven in the middle of Kirkwall’s maelstrom.

He spends his days with Fenris, combing through Garrett’s library and Fenris revels in it, in his newfound freedom, chance to grow into who he wants to be; the joy of a second, kinder adolescence. Sebastian clambers the ladders and shelves, retrieving even the most obscure requests.

“You could just ask me for help, you know,” Anders says, and there’s new shadows under his eyes.

“He could,” Fenris says as Sebastian drops a book into his waiting hands, “But where’s the fun in that?” He flips through the book, a flurry of pages, and his brow pinches as he focuses on the words, mouth shaping them as he read, “Shapeshifting?”

He and Sebastian both turn their focus to Anders, only mage in the room, repository of any proper understanding of magic. Anders shrugs, nonchalant.

“It’s in his name,” he says, “Before we’re anything, we’re our names.”

 

* * *

 

Eventually, Hawke’s home becomes a hub of political activity. It’s through no effort on Garrett’s part; merely a side effect of becoming Champion and having Ferelden’s chancellor, hero of the Fifth Blight, as a house guest.

Anders shrinks away from Gwydion Amell, hides himself as if ashamed, and only returns the estate once it’s clear that the Grey Wardens of Ferelden have no interest in dragging him back in chains, in sending him down to the Deep Roads on a crusade, repentance for his desertion.

The reality turns out to be less intimidating.

Gwydion sits at one of the estate’s windows, looking down into the courtyard, watching as Anders plays with a sparrowhawk, grey wings blurring in the air.

“You get used to it,” he says when Sebastian approaches him, as quiet and cautious as he approaches any altar to the Maker.

“Used to what?”

“Doing things duty demands, even if the heart regrets.” Gwydion cocks his head, considers Sebastian with a birdlike intensity, “It’s why he stays in this place.”

“He says duty is a chain,” Sebastian says and he watches as Anders feeds the sparrowhawk, fingers bare in their trust, “Do you think the same?”

Gwydion smiles and doesn’t answer for a while. He watches with eyes that stared down a god, grey in the golden sunlight, and Sebastian notices how his hands are always moving: turning Sandal’s enchantments over with old familiarity; twisting leather ties through his fingers; reshaping and building the world according to his image.

“I’ve rattled my chains,” he says eventually and his hands still. Sebastian realises that the ties he’s holding are jesses, “And now I can enjoy being free.”

 

* * *

 

Winter comes and finds the three of them in the same bed. Anders lies with his cheek against the scar in Garrett’s belly, covering the ugly livid thing, one hand curled against Garrett’s hip, content as a cat in the sun and just as certain about where to place his affections. Sebastian sits against the headboard, Garrett’s back against his chest, nose pressed into dark hair; he wishes that his days of lechery had taught him what to do with a heart full of love, that his Chantry days had taught him what to do with his hands with no prayers to fill them.

“When I finish playing Templar,” Garrett says, and Anders makes a sound that’s part disgusted and part amused; they all know Garrett is dragging it out, “I think we should leave. Go somewhere and start a new country. Call it the Summer Country and rule it like kings.” He manages to fix a kiss somewhere south of Sebastian’s right ear, “The first law: no winter.”

“Three kings guarantees arguments,” Anders mumbles, and Sebastian suspects he may have been falling asleep.

“My father used to say the soul was made of three parts. Crowns can be the same.”

Anders presses his face closer to Garrett’s warm skin, “Well, you are lying on an expert on both.”

“Hardly an expert on souls,” Sebastian says, “and still learning about crowns.”

“Don’t need to be an expert when you’re starting from scratch,” Garrett says, “You can just make it up as you go.”

Sebastian wraps his arms across Garrett’s chest and looks away as Anders peppers Garrett in kisses, markers on his world, familiar territory long ago settled and made home. It’s easy for them to talk about new country, when they’re not holding it in their arms, easy to say new ways when they haven’t spent their life trying to learn the old ones.

He’s always been a slow learner, he thinks, as he tugs Garrett closer and buries his face in the crook of Garrett’s shoulder, sheltering behind hard muscle there.

But he learns.

 

* * *

 

He feels the Chantry explosion behind his ribs, breaking out in a burst of muscle and blood and bone, his entire life from fifteen to thirty sent scattering into the sky and across Kirkwall’s streets. Voices come to him through water but there’s a memory of Anders, clear as diamonds: _shock is the best drug that I have._

Sebastian wishes he could keep riding that forever. He doesn’t remember what he said when he left Garrett’s side; he doesn’t remember which way he went after turning his back; he doesn’t remember how he ended up in an alley, a Templar dagger sank in his belly, consequences for harbouring two apostates. He wants to go on not remembering but the pain brings him slamming back to earth, world gone up in flames. He huddles on the ground as he pulls the blade out, gleaming in the fire’s ruddy light, his lungs choked in smoke, and listens to the city crumbling.

A choice to make, he thinks, and his father’s first lesson had been that a prince’s duty is to protect the innocent, something repeated over and over, recited to him on his grandfather’s knee and at Andraste’s feet. He stands and drawing arrows on his bow pulls the wound in his belly and blood turns the night red.

When he finds Garrett again, comes back to his hand, he can only think how they match, two scars the same.

“You came back to me,” he whispers, one hand searching beneath Sebastian’s mail for the bleeding wound. Sebastian’s own hands shake like moonlight and Anders doesn’t meet his eye, “I’m sorry.”

Sebastian says nothing. He buries his face in Garrett’s coat, ignoring Fenris and Anders and the Warden who can only be Garrett’s brother. He wants to say why, why he left, why he came back but there will be time for why and how and why again when they’re done here.

The world is burning and he still isn’t ready to say goodbye.

 

* * *

 

“You can stay with me, sweetness,” Isabela says, and Sebastian winces as she presses stinging salt water against a cut on his forehead, “You and me and the open sea. We’d have fun, you and I.”

For once, there’s nothing salacious in her tone and, had Sebastian been his younger self, he’d take her up on it in a heartbeat, young wild thing with no obligations and no promises even to himself.

“Ostwick first,” he says, “Then Starkhaven.” He wants to curl up like a child in her lap, but Isabela doesn’t offer that kind of safe haven, “I’m so tired of fighting.”

“Retaking a city isn’t going to be peaceful.”

“Win or lose, it’s only one more fight.”

“I love your optimism.” She wipes the last of the blood off of his face, “And now the awful red stuff’s stopped as well. Finally, there’ll be a scar on that perfect face.”

He’s grateful for her, at ease, taking control of Garrett’s circle as easily as any ship, hand on the rudder and steering them to safety. He takes her cool headed attitude, with no fear of drowning, and stashes it away as a lesson learnt.

By the time Garrett rouses himself back to the land of the living, dragged backwards out of the sunken pit he’s dug for himself by his brother, and finds him, Sebastian’s worked his way through Isabela’s entire catalogue of sailor’s knots. He casts broken arrowheads out into the water and waits for Garrett to come to him. Garrett says his thanks yous, Sebastian says his whys and his hands go quiet.

“So you’re going to be a prince,” Garrett says, “It will suit you.”

“And you’ll be free.” Finally, blissfully free, no more Kirkwall caging him. Hawks are not meant to be caged, “With Anders, but freedom nonetheless.”

“And I am sorry. About Elthina. I know you parted on bad terms but she meant a lot to you.”

There’s a lot Sebastian leaves unsaid: about love and luck and guiding winds; about leaving weapons and war behind, because no bird ever flew on armoured wings. He refuses to weigh Garrett down like an anchor. The lights of Ostwick glow on the water but Sebastian ignores them, choosing Garrett for one last time. He catches hold of Garrett’s hand after the cut on his forehead is healed and studies Garrett’s face, his own revised map of Thedas, commits it to memory: eyes like the sea, blue one day and grey the next, the wave of a tattoo framing the left; the lines where his smile kicks up more on one side; the way he’s never managed to be entirely clean shaven and the braid he tucks behind his ear like a secret.

“So do you,” he says and he leans for their last kiss, magic on his mouth, before he takes his first step into his future, “Goodbye Garrett.”

 

* * *

 

The future pulls itself together like a bag of tricks, like a story already told. Sebastian takes his crown from Goran’s willing, shaking fingers; he marries Cigfa Amell and Ostwick finally takes its place as one of the great Marcher states, joined to Starkhaven with Kirkwall’s own blood; he becomes a father, a role frightening in its newness and vulnerability. He stitches a family together out of scraps, builds a state and a court out of the bones of his old lives.

He writes to Garrett with every new change and Garrett always writes back, their letters going through Varric, maintaining the red thread that tied them all through those Kirkwall years.

Then the sky opens and Garrett’s last letter comes.

Sebastian opens it alone in his study, at his father’s old desk. He breaks the Inquisition wax and three feathers fall free, plucked from a sparrowhawk’s wing, and he doesn’t even need to read the letter to know what it says. Garrett will not be coming back. His young, treacherous heart cries out: _what about Anders?_

Cigfa finds him in the morning, turning one feather over in his hands, and folds him up in her arms the way she does their daughter. He bites his lip to push the tears back; she smells of lavender and it’s the bittersweet smell of memory.

 

* * *

 

There was once a prince, who was once a priest, who had a hawk. It was not a kept bird but came and went as it pleased, wings unclipped, legs unfettered, but it always came back. The court whispered about the bird, about its origins: conjured by magic, some said, sinister and to be avoided; a gift from the prince’s brother-in-law, others said, famed for his own heroism and magic, fond of birds. Green light trailed from its wings and tail when it flew and its eyes were strange, human in their colour, blue on some days and grey on others; it needed no glove to hold it and the prince spoke to it as he would a man. It slept on a perch in the prince’s chambers, confined to no mews.

“It’s unnatural,” the courtiers said, “Turn it away, lord. We have better birds, good hunters, loyal and true. It will never be kept.”

The prince only smiled, one hand wrapped around his daughter’s, the other holding the hawk, talons on bare skin.

“No,” he said, and the hawk ruffles its feathers, proud of itself, of its place on the prince’s left hand, “Hawks aren’t meant to be kept.”


End file.
